What is the reward you are looking for? Telling yourself things like "no employer would want me" is not a fact and just discourages you, the language we speak to ourselves with affects our emotional state and perception.

You aren't inferior to anyone, we are all judged by different and subjective standards and only your view of yourself and your progress is truly important. Try not to worry about being perfect for an employer, no employee is perfect, and it's more effective to make a connection to the people hiring or sell yourself as a person that they want to work with rather than having perfect credentials. And besides, you post on hexbear so that automatically makes you cooler than 99% of people

College classes are a good idea, why is it crucial to be 'top of the class'? What helps motivation for me is not worrying so much about your distance from the ultimate goal, but the progress of each step. You can only take one step at a time.

Sorry if this all just sounds cheesy and cliché, reminding myself this stuff helps me though.

Try to actively recognize and viciously beat back all negative thoughts telling you that you can't do this, that's all the dumb part of your brain telling you unhelpful bullshit that isn't gonna do anything for you

I put in all this work and I almost never see any reward for it

Almost isn't never

totally unemployable and while I have a summer gig right now

Totally unemployable but you have a job right now? That's called "your brain saying stupid shit at you stop listening to it."

But what’s the point if I’m not top of my class?

99.9% of jobs aren't going to be measuring your GPA, the point of college is to LEARN SOMETHING and, for the purposes of job shit, show to the managerial class that you're a nerd who can do what they're told long enough to get through a 4 year program. That's it.

First off, you don't need to improve. That whole framing is off. You personally have desires and achieving those desires is worthwhile because YOU are worthwhile. You deserve to pursue and achieve your desires. In that context, you may need additional power(s) and those are things you can specifically frame as improvements you want to achieve your desires.

So for example, you want to lose weight. That's fine, but that's a very specific improvement towards one or more aims. Perhaps you want better long term health, or to participate in specific activities that your weight restricts you from, or perhaps you have a desired body image. You deserve your authentic desires and achieving them may require specific improvements. That framing is so important because YOU are not something that needs improvement, it's specific capabilities and properties that enable you to achieve your desires that you are choosing to improve.

Practically speaking though, working out isn't really the path to weight loss. The adage goes: build muscle in the gym, lose weight in the kitchen. The fact that you're working out hard means you likely have a lot of muscle waiting to be exposed. Cutting fat requires you to improve your knowledge of human biology, metabolism, nutrition, and specifically your own body's behavior. It's time to be curious, not fearful or despondent. Yes, of COURSE you can lose fat - it's a standard function of the human body, of all mammalian bodies. The question becomes how does your body need to be activated for that to happen. There is an answer to that question and you are capable of finding it. When you find it, you'll be faced with the challenge of whether or not it's worth it, but you don't need to worry about that until after you've learned more about how your body responds to various behavioral changes on your part.

Next up. Employers don't give a flying fuck about your GPA. The only companies that do are white supremacist consulting firms that only hire from elite institutions and the only reason they care about GPA is because it's a solid filter for keeping the poors out. Plenty of fail sons with shit GPAs get those jobs, so that tells you GPA is used for specific purposes. I can say this as hiring manager I have NEVER in the 100s of people I have hired EVER looked at someone's grades. I care about whether the person is capable of learning, capable of humility, capable of courage and curiosity, and has the minimum knowledge and experience required to succeed in the position. Whatever you believe about hiring, it's wrong. And you can hang your hat on that because you've never hired anyone and so your beliefs are all based on something other than reality. Give up those beliefs and acknowledge you have no idea how hiring works or what people look for and just get out there and do what you do.

Trust me. You're enough.

If you believe you can’t do something then you definitely can’t.

Everyone else has covered the specifics very well but on a general level, you need to rebuild your relationship with your reward mechanisms. It sounds like you’re not allowing yourself to feel satisfied at what you have achieved, because you think it’s not enough. You need to start letting yourself feel good about having done exercise, about getting a summer gig, about being someone who tries, about considering college.

The reason for this is that if your brain doesn’t get rewarded for achieving small things, it doesn’t give you motivation to seek greater rewards, because it starts believing that nothing will bring it satisfaction. I’m talking on a chemical level.

I was in that trap for most of my life and I’ve recently been working myself out of it. It sounds silly but you just have to keep telling yourself stuff like “I worked out today, good job me”. And most importantly: praise yourself for doing the action, not for achieving a result.

I believe in you OP.

you have to want it deeply to your core, and if you don't then suddenly communists turn into calvinists.

motivation is an unsolved problem, but you can avoid things that egregiously demotivate you which is what other people are on about with how you've framed some of your statements and the standard you misattribute to employers when what you're really up against is "ai" and nepotism.

Ok a few things I’m just gonna list them out:

1. I don’t have any good advice re: motivation. The best I’ve found for self improvement is to say “ok DragonBallZinn wants me to be happy so I gotta do it for him.” Probably not the healthiest but I find it works.
2. Fuck losing fat. Fuck that whole concept. I’m constantly struggling with my self image and belly fat but it’s all just self-deprecating nonsense. How’s your heart? How do your muscles feel? Are you healthy? That’s what really matters. You know that BMI was invented by some crazy frenchman trying to describe the perfect white man right? It somehow got adopted by actual doctors but it’s not a real measurement of anything useful.
3. Being top of your class means jack shit long term. I thought my life was over when my final average gpa was under 3.0 but no one gives a shit once you’ve been in the job for two years. The job market is fucked so you gotta try to make connections and apply to a stupid number of stupid jobs. And by “make connections” I mean go somewhere and meet people in real life and literally nothing past that. If someone knows you’re a personable non-asshole who wears deodorant that puts you over any faceless resume who’s just as qualified.

Conclusion: If you’re ontologically anything it’s ontologically blind to your worth. Don’t let the nonsense metrics of the capitalist hell society let you think you’re worthless.

The point of working out is not to lose fat per se, the point of working out is to get stronger. You do a muscle motion to the edge of your ability enough times, and your muscles get better at doing that muscle motion. If you can do pull-ups and a respectable number of push-ups and run a mile without walking... if you can move yourself in the way you want to move, that's all that matters.

I'm on the skinny side, people have often wondered aloud to me "why don't you just bulk up". It's not really in my biology. I wish I had a layer of fat so that you couldn't see my ribs. But if I can hoist 80-pound bags of cement, I can jump and pull myself onto things, that's all that matters. I really don't need to do the stupid gymbro numbers game.

A big part is lifestyle. My fitness is integrated into my lifestyle (bicycle transport, manual labor). Another big thing is habitually cooking for yourself. Even if it doesn't make you slimmer, then hey, at least you end up as a capable cook, and able to take the agency for your own sustenance instead of accepting it from a ready-made source.

Take the college courses that are intrinsically valuable to you. Learn what you want to learn. Taking a few courses doesn't immediately force your commitment into a 40-year career; lots of things will inform your experience indirectly. And at a community college, you can take a 3-credit class for a total sum of less than $1000.

I promise you, 95% of Americans (and 90% of American college graduates) can't use the word "ontologically" in legible prose. In the age where everyone seems to make heavy use of assistive technology, you can put together a coherent thought.

A lot of what you're experiencing is the effects of alienation. Being able to get into the nuts and bolts of something, instead of assuming "this is entirely the purview of someone else" has been one of the biggest mindset shifts of my life.

But what’s the point if I’m not top of my class?

do colleges/universities even provide your class rank? (law school is different)

i don't know a single employer that cares about this. they care about your experience, education, and your personality.

"I don't know if I can take it. Sometimes it seems like the whole thing is pointless. Like I am a loser and I will always be a loser. I do not know what to do "

"You're right. All the effort is pointless... If you don't believe in yourself "

Another thought, my friend is into witchy manifestation woowoo bullshit and one of her things is saying "thank you, more please" when something good happens

I don't believe in the manifestation b.s. but from experience it might still help you. I think it's training yourself to react with gratitude when something good happens which helps you in turn to notice and be mindful of those good things happening. It's just a little thing that imo could help you get out of these patterns of thinking about yourself